The below logic was inspired by the recent Somali Pirate issues:

What is the difference between Pirates and Terrorist?

Pirates pull up to your boat while shooting at you. They kill you. Take your boat and your stuff. Terrorist pull their boat up to yours and blow their boat up and your boat up…killing themselves, you, and destroying all of your stuff.

Simple. Maybe if Terrorist cared more about stealing stuff and less about blowing stuff up the world would be safer.

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And the winner is…well…neither. Sad really, but no, I can’t give the round to either one.

This isn’t a “blow by blow”, because well, it was last night and I went on with my life post debate. But for the purpose of a quick “opinion” I think I can recall enough to opine as it were.

First impressions, McCain was off his game, and Obama was the normal Obama. And by normal I mean the Hopester and Change-artist. Lots of words, very little substance. Okay, to be fair and in the spirit of full disclosure I am not an Obama supporter. No I will not be voting for him. But I think I am capable of being fair and objective, as I am really not a fan of McCain. I disagree with QUITE a few of his positions, so I am not flyin’ that banner either.

Back to the first impressions: Obama was, well, Obama. I tried to find some substance but I think the only time our boy landed a blow was when he made his quick jabs about Beach Boy’s inspired sing-alongs and his “McCain is just like Bush” talk. In fact, he did good there. It was obvious that that was his message, making McCain and Bush look like one, and attributing all that is bad and evil in the world (regardless of actual responsibility) on the Bush Administration and by the laws of politics…on McCain. If that was the strategy he followed through pretty good. He also did a good job of controlling the tempo. He took the ball and kept it and even when it wasn’t his turn, he still took the ball. Where he fell down on the job was his very naive approach to foreign policy. It showed pretty easily that he was like many of us on a lot of subjects…knowing just enough to be dangerous.

McCain was obviously off his mark. He spent most of the time flustered and unable to clearly rebut most of what Obama had to say. Obama clearly had broken McCains rhythm and was having his way with the tempo and the pace of the debate. McCain missed opportunity after opportunity to put the boy down, but instead he was always fighting the wrong point. Instead of meeting Obama on the POINT and staying on POINT and taking the POINT he kept going back to the last point or a point an hour before (like his hard on for talking about Iraq). The only thing I think McCain did good on was distilling the issues with Russia down to the truth: the BTC pipeline. That pipeline that American companies and our government has used to outflank Russian’s dominance oil in that region.

In the end I felt that Obama performed as I expected. He talked a lot but didn’t say much. He did get fluster a few times, but sadly it was not of McCain’s doing I don’t believe. McCain however was a disappointment. He had quite a few chances to really challenge Obama on various things. Obama was playing politics as usual, counting voting records (which anyone knows is a waste of time because of all the added crap the put in bills…you can be called on voting against feeding babies but no one cares that there was section of the baby feeding bill that gave money to mass murders for killing babies).

The two key things I think McCain missed was Obama’s assertion that we are in debt because of the “Bush Budget”. Sadly McCain missed a great chance to tell the truth. The fact is the President doesn’t do that. Not his lane. Congress approves spending. They make the budget, write the checks, lick the stamps. The President signs the bill (the budget) into law. McCain should have called him on that. He could have simultaneously distanced him self from Bush, brought Obama back to the reality that everyone is responsible (read: Democrats too), and highlighted his attempts to control spending in the Congress.

The second thing I think was foreign policy. He, McCain, really lost a chance to show his qualifications and his understanding of the world and our place in it. Obama kept harping on “The Stan”, to great affect. But instead of meeting him on that and talking clearly and targeted on the subject of strategy…he came off whiny by saying Obama didn’t understand and was naive. I don’t want to hear that…I know that. Show me. Explain it to me. I don’t want to hear McCain “attack” Obama’s lack of understanding. I want to understand so that I can conclude that Obama is naive on these issues.

Which, let’s be honest. He is. He doesn’t understand the grand strategy. He’s not ready to pick it up. And to and that came through last night, to me at least). To be honest, I don’t think it really matters which one of these fools wins…they WILL continue the grand strategy. All presidents do.

Well…enough of that. Probably not the best opinion of the debate. If I get around to running on the web today I might find a better one and track back to it to that anyone who stops by here may have an opportunity to read a REAL review of the debate.

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Just got finished watching this De Niro flick with the little girl that was in everything a few years ago. You know the one that is now 12 or 13 years old doing that flick where she wore a body suit and simulates sex. Got to love her parents. But I digress…Hide and Seek. Yes, not bad. Slow. Steady. A poor man’s early M. Night Shyamalan. M. Night before he lost that cool edge of making cool movies. You know, before he invaded earth with space aliens that were smart enough to have figured out inter-galactic space flight but couldn’t open a door using a door knob.

In the end it took me a little longer to figure out the flick…the back end that I won’t spoil if you have never seen it…but I think it was because I was over analyzing it. Maybe not De Niro’s best, but it was a solid performance, he played the part I think they wanted him too. Dakota had a couple really sick lines and faces. Some of them were a little creepy for a father of a 9 year old to see. She earned her check even if she shouldn’t have been the one carrying the flick.

In the end it was predictable. There were couple things that were interesting…the old bad-guy behind the door trick was twisted a bit and even though you knew it was gonna happen, it was still sort of refreshing.

All in all I will give it a rating of 2. And since this is my first movie opinion I will give you the quick run down on the numbers.

The ratings are 0 through 5:

0 being NEVER watch the rated movie. Ever. In fact if forced to watch a flick rated 0 you should hunt down those who made you and terminate them. An example of a 0 would be Scorpion King 2. Yeah, don’t watch it. I turned it off before it was finished and returned it to Blockbuster. I almost asked for my money back, but was too ashamed to admit I had rented it in the first place.

A 1 means if you have no other entertainment choices…it’s okay to watch. Let’s call that the “It is day 10 of a 12 day hurricane related lock in where you have no power, no food, no cable and all the stores are closed and you have just enough battery power left to watch one more movie and that one is the last one, oh and you can’t think of anything better to do with that last bit of juice. A good “1″ example would be In The Name Of The King, A Dungeon Siege Tale. Sadly it was not worth the price of a rental. I had such high hopes too…but had I had it on DVD during the time I spent living at my office during Hurricane Rita, I would have watched it on about day 16…

A 2 simply means if it is already on TV for free or part of a larger rental purchase (read: Netflix or rent all you want deal from Blockbuster). So, if you are already paying for the Encore or Starz or what have you and they are playing Hide and Seek…go ahead and watch it, but don’t be afraid to go the bathroom during the slow parts.

A 3 means it’s worth spending money on. Rent it or go to the movie. Whatever the deal, it’s okay to spend some hard earned cash. Maybe even worth a few of those hard won dollars you made last night dancing on some bar. Spend some cash and watch the flick. A good example of a 3 would be Perfume, A Story Of Murderer. A good solid entertaining flick, worth the bucks to rent it. Infact…you should rent it now. Add it to your Netflix queue or go to Blockbuster tomorrow morning.

A 4 means that you really should watch this flick at the theater…and not a small screen either, a real screen if you can pull it off. That means you really need some pop corn, a theater seat, some over priced DP and candy and a couple hundred of your closest friends to enjoy it with. And yes, it’s okay if they are talking during the movie, it’s worth getting angry and wanting to hurt some kids a few rows down from you. An example of late would be Indiana Jones & the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Just a great movie theater show. A movie meant to be seen in that environment. Makes you feel 9 again watching Raiders of the Lost Ark at the movie theater that’s not there anymore in Sulphur. And yes, I even remember Veda running of during the snake parts. Veda hates snakes. But without a theater for her to run out of…it just wouldn’t have been the same. Get my point? I knew you would.

A 5 means you must see that flick. On a train, in a plane. On a bus, next to Gus. Damn near wait in line like some spoiled Star Trek fan-boy in your Pokemon tent…do what ever it takes but you must watch it. And yes…you definitely should watch it on the biggest THX driven screen you can. You have to watch it. Over someone’s shoulder on their iPod, on TV, you have no choice. If you die without seeing it the gods will give you a do-over. A recent example: The Dark Knight. Sure, Batman wasn’t really as good as he was in Begins, but Heathe was the man. Played that role like he stole it. And yes Jack warned him to tread lightly, but threw caution to the wind and that performance alone makes watching the movie a requirement to breath.

That’s it. That’s the scale. So yeah, if you are at your girlfriend/boyfriend’s house and Hide and Seek is coming on Encore, go head and watch it. But don’t pick it up at the video store. And to be honest, unless you put 30+ videos in the mailbox to go back to Netflix every month, I wouldn’t put it in your queue.

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Things are chanigng around here. And yes, the old website has been scrapped, but shortly things will be back to 100%. In the mean time I will probably ramble on and on about things that matter very little, but you’re gonna have that on them big jobs.

The changes should be severe though. No more massive flash stuff to keep up with. No massive amount of images no one really cares about. Just a nice clean blog like site with some minor additions. Cheif on my plans are a media player to play songs I have written and recorded for both solo projects, bands, and working demos. I will also be adding a calendar of gigs.

But where chrislouviere.com v2 was a musicians site to promote my music, v3 will just about me. I will have anything that’s on my mind on here, from thoughts to media. If I write a poem (yes…I do that from time to time) it will be here. If I do an acoustic demo for a song it will be here. If I do some web pages for someone, it will be linked. And yes, I my even put a program I have written or speak of the virtues of mead.

In short, anything that is me…but I will hopefully keep it clean and easy and not full of myspacian clutter and wasted space and bandwidth.

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